More than one week after Muni and union leaders representing the agency’s drivers failed to agree on a new contract, city officials are railing against the lack of any changes to the deal.

Nathaniel Ford, head of the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency, recently negotiated a three-year contract extension with drivers that made no changes in the labor deal. Voters last year approved a ballot measure that would sink at least $26 million more into Muni on the condition that the transit agency toughen up its contractual rules with drivers to improve the on-time and overall transit experience. The lack of any changes has prompted city officials who campaigned for the measure to call into question a number of provisions for the Muni operators.

Muni has made improvements under the leadership of Ford, who took the head post in 2006, but the agency continues to fail in living up to the voter mandated on-time performance rate of 85 percent (it has peaked at 71 percent) and residents continue to complain about the transit system’s reliability. Muni is facing an $80.7 million projected budget shortfall during the next two years.

The deal carries over provisions that were in place in the contract dating back to July 2004. One provision in the contract lays out punishments for drivers who fail to show up for work or show up late, a significant problem contributing to Muni delays.

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Drivers could be terminated or suspended for repeat offenses, but after every eight months, the records of absences from work are wiped clean and drivers start over with a clean slate. The record is cleared after five months for late arrivals to work.

“I’m not The City’s labor negotiator or Muni’s labor negotiator, but it seems to me that the minimum amount of time is a year,” said Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who authored the ballot measure.

“We didn’t get a single work force change. I am terribly frustrated with the results that have come,” Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said recently.

Peskin also questioned the drivers’ incentives in the contract. One incentive includes $250 per driver in divisions that have the fewest collisions, as well as $250 for reductions in the number of passenger complaints.

“When [incentives] are given away too easily, then it’s not a real incentive,” Peskin said.

Muni spokesman Judson True said that the agency can continue to improve the management of the operators’ job performance with the existing contract but that the “money that would have been required to negotiate work rule changes is needed to invest in service improvements.”

jsabatini@sfexaminer.com